Amputated
by Night-Timer
Summary: Set near the end of POA. What if Harry and Hermione didn't make it back to the hospital wing in time? What would happen that Hermione "didn't want to think about"? H/Hr, the way it was meant to be. Rated T for now
1. Chapter 1

**A/N**

**I have never written fan fiction, or anything for that matter, but love reading it and have always came up with alternative ideas while reading the Harry Potter books. This will be a story based on the possibility of "what if Harry and Hermione didn't make it back to their original selves before the time turner ran out, or whatever it is time turners do"? Expect something probably poorly written due to my inexperience, and if you get confused at some point, it's probably because I've gone back and changed a major plot point because, inexperienced writer and lazy person that I am, this story will be very largely improvised. I also hope that if any fan of Harry Potter who has any pride at all will go read ****The Story by Dad**** by Dad9, it is quite possibly the best fan fiction ever; it is already 104 chapters long and not particularly close to ending. I would like to state Dad9 as my inspiration for writing fan fiction. Enjoy!**

**Night-Timer**

Harry was in a situation he never would have thought he'd ever find himself in. He was hiding in a deserted classroom en-route to the hospital wing with one of his best friends pressing her ear to the door to see if the poltergeist had gone by yet, as he was impeding their race to get back to their original bodies, which would be in the hospital wing by now, about to go back in time themselves.

They waited until Peeves' cackling had faded away before exiting the room and breaking into a run towards the hospital wing. Hermione had checked her watch before leaving: they had just over a minute left before they went back in time.

'Hermione – what'll happen – if we – don't get back inside – before Dumbledore locks the door?' Harry panted.

'I don't want to think about it' moaned Hermione. She checked her watch, 'One minute Harry!'

They continued running towards the next corridor, which was where the hospital wing resided, but about 20 meters before the corner Hermione stepped on something small and round and slipped and fell to the side, causing Harry to trip over her and land uncomfortably on a large amount of small glass balls, which littered the floor in beneath and in front of the two third-years.

'What the bloody hell is all this?' called Harry from a few feet away. He was trying to stand but it was proving difficult amongst the cascade of marbles.

'I don't know but we've got to get to the hospital quickly!' Gasped Hermione, who was also trying to stand to no avail.

'Oooooooh it's wee Potty and little Girly out of bed late, should call Filch I should'

'Peeves you malevolent little-', Peeves didn't get to hear the rest as Hermione tripped once more upon the many marbles flowing beneath her.

'Manners Girly, jus' do me duty, keeping wee Potty and his friends from being... sneaky', taunted Peeves who was now shaking a previously unseen burlap sack to get all of the remaining marbles onto the floor.

'Wadiwasi!' shouted Harry, using the spell Lupin had used at the start of term to propel a marble from the ground up Peeves' nostril, sending him careening down the hall and giving a chance for Harry to right himself. He hustled over to Hermione, who was still in the thick of the marble landslide and had no such chance to get herself upright, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her to her feet.

'Thanks'

'Don't mention it'

'Now RUN, we're almost out of time!'

With every ounce of energy they could possibly exert they sprunt to the next corridor. They flew around the corner at a record pace just in time to see Professor Dumbledore begin to descend the staircase at the end of the corridor.

Harry, running full pelt towards the hospital wing alongside Hermione, filled his lungs in an attempt to get enough air to call out to the professor, but before the words could even make it to his lips he tripped once more. He whipped his head around in an effort to locate the poltergeist so as to curse the living daylights out of him, and discovered two things: One, that Hermione had also fallen victim to this latest misfortune, and Two, that Peeves could not possibly be responsible for what had tripped them this time.

The floor was convulsing rapidly, sending waves of floor speeding at them like surf, making it impossible to attempt to stand. Above them the walls and ceiling were also behaving in such a manner, and it was quickly getting more intense, with the waves coming faster and higher on each surface, buffeting Harry and Hermione constantly, while making a noise only comparable to the largest creature in the world inhaling all the air in the world all at once'.

Harry heard Hermione shout his name a couple feet to his right and though he had next to no ability to walk on the convulsive surface he made a lunge in the direction of her voice when the floor launched him upwards and manage to grab her hand uncomfortably with his thumb in between her middle and ring finger and her thumb through his, which in a bizarre way, and despite the chaotic situation, made Harry feel as though they should have an arm wrestle. At the same time in a less stupid part of his brain, he registered that the waves on each surface were now so high that they were pushing Harry and Hermione into the exact vertical center of the corridor to find themselves surrounded in every direction by a bubble of violently shivering marble and stone.

Harry and Hermione shook in fear almost as violently as the stone bubble now completely surrounding them, and only shivered more severely as from it a marble tendril shot forth from it into the space created by their unusual grasp on eachother's hands. They watched in horror as the matter of the bubble seemed to flow though the tendril to its tip, fearing that said tip would expand with the added material and crush them both. Oddly enough it didn't expand as physics would expect to happen when matter is added, but instead grew intensely hot as it absorbed what seemed to be every bit of matter in the known universe (excluding the two persons holding it) in perhaps a second or two.

Of what was going on around them Harry and Hermione had no understanding but did have an onslaught of frightening sensations from the whole production, so they just clung to one another and hoped that it would all end soon. Their wishes were soon granted as the bubble around them was completely absorbed with a mighty inhalant noise into the ultra-compact orb of matter held between their hands.

And all was **Black.**

**A/N: I strongly believe the past tense of sprint should be sprunt :p**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I'm terribly sorry I didn't write this sooner, I'm just so busy reading fan fiction it's hard to take myself away long enough to write. I'm trying to describe something very weird so bear with me if it makes little sense. They're basically in a parallel universe right now where they are the only beings and they're cognitive abilities are reduced. I strongly recommend reading of the fics responsible for making me take so long to write this because they are so good: Harry Potter and the Years of Rebellion, Harry Potter and the Acceptance of Fate, and Delicate. They are all several hundred thousand words and are all full of Harmonious goodness, good plots, and NO SOUL BONDING! Enjoy.**

Harry blinked his eyes several times, wondering why he had seemingly just gone blind. He squinted at his hand directly in front of his face: Nothing. There was an absolute absence of light in… wherever he was. But it wasn't just him that was wherever he was, there was something else. He felt around him with his free hand and felt nothing but empty space, somehow even emptier than normal empty space. There was no temperature. Not in the sense that it was moderate, there actually was no sensation of hot or cold in any sense in this bizarre space he, neigh, _they_ were in. He did remember that there was something else other than himself in this void and he had an inkling that it may in fact be a someone else rather than a thing.

He seemed to remember a simpler time when he could see things to identify them, but remembered that hearing things worked as well, so he tried to communicate with the possibility of another entity with a sound his muscles had plenty of experience making "Hello?" Except nothing happened, nothing audible anyways, air departed from his lungs, filling the space around him briefly before rushing towards his hand, in which lay something very… heavy. Harry noticed that this thing was indeed something that was not himself. He tried to remove his hand from it to observe but it was futile. It was far heavier than him and seemed to be the only other matter in the world, so as it were, his hand wasn't going anywhere. He thought for a while about this thing, and determined that it was both extremely heavy, hot, and had something on it that was intertwined with his own hand that seemed to be covering the space on this thing that his hand wasn't. This external part was also warm, but not in the intense way of the thing within his hand, it was softer and more comfortable than that super-compressed ball of matter.

It was at this moment that Harry decided he should try prying his hand away from the thing, as it disconcerted him to be so helplessly stuck, and in doing so he discovered that his hand felt an awful lot like the thing attached to the ball. _"Egad, it's another hand!" _Concluded Harry, and with a burst of tuition he came to the additional conclusions that hands are attached to arms and arms are attached to people, therefore there must be another person attached to that hand!

He tenderly reached his free hand out to touch the hand of the other person and felt a brief softness under his fingertips before his wrist became suddenly trapped in a vice like grip. He was trapped! Thoughts now ran through his mind much quicker than before, _"What if it's malevolent?" "What if it wants to hurt me?" _Before he could formulate any kind of escape plan the other released its grip on his wrist. He felt a brief moment of relief before he felt a pat on his forearm, and then another by his elbow. The other continued to pat higher and higher up his body until it got to his face. It then proceeded to cup his chin, feel around the sides of his ears, run its fingers through his hair, and finally examine the glasses on his face. After a moment of the other running its fingers around his circular spectacles he felt a large amount of bushy hair envelope his face and shoulders as the other, using the weight in their hands as a pivot, swung its body into his.

After his shock from this turn of events subsided he decided to discover wha- who this person was and why they had flung themselves at him. Fortunately for his determining process the most obviously clue was right in his face, figuratively and literally. He laced his fingers through the mass of hair and ran them through it, earning a shiver from the owner of said mass.

With all of his impressive cognitive powers he focused his brain on the subject of hair. He concluded that people had it, and that they keep most of it on their heads. He made the leap to think of people and hair at the same time and realized that people can be identified by their hair! He thought of the hair of people he knew and brought up memories of wavy hair that if could be seen was red, his own messy black hair, the shaggy black hair of someone he met recently, or was he thinking of a dog's fur? Finally he remembered hair that was thick and bushy, and concluded that it belonged to a girl he knew, which immediately made him embarrassed of the position he was in with said girl, her smaller frame folded into his.

He tensed slightly in embarrassment and felt the girl's hair shift as her head turned towards his as if to look at him. A moment later he felt her hand running through his hair repeatedly and felt her head turn back away from him as he relaxed under the treatment. He was enjoying the hand in his hair very much so he figured the girl must be a friend. This realization calmed him further, figuring that the only other person here was a friendly one, he was fairly content.

He wondered how much time they had been there for and in so doing remembered time. He figured there has to be something for things to happen in, right? He wondered how one could know how much time had passed; there was nothing around that was moving or changing that he could judge by. He would have counted his heartbeats, if it weren't for the fact that his heart wasn't beating. He wondered if the girl knew about time or how to measure it. He was about to ask when he remembered alas, there was no way to ask.

He slumped his shoulders in defeat. This did not go unnoticed by the girl, who stopped running her hand through his hair and placed it on his shoulder comfortingly. He wrapped his arm around her midsection in response and gave a little squeeze. With no further ideas on how to measure time, Harry simply contented himself with returning the earlier favor and running his fingers through the girl's hair, which she proceeded in turn to do to him.

They both continued on contentedly for an obviously indeterminable length of time until the girl suddenly sat up very straight, displacing Harry's hand. She then felt her way down his other arm until she reached his wrist and found the object of her search: A band of fabric with a galleon-sized circle on top. She then probed the sides of the circle with her fingertip until she found a protrusion, which she then pushed in. _"Merlin, I can see!"_

Harry opened his eyes wide and examined the one visible object in the whole known universe: his watch display. The little black bits inside of it read 8:45, from which Harry could discern nothing from until the image flashed slightly, changing to 8:46. Harry gasped as much as one could without making any noise, he realized that these little black lines would change and would make time understandable for him. Apparently the girl understood too because she threw herself at Harry and gave him the biggest one-armed hug possible to give, which he happily returned, ecstatic about their discovery. They both released eachother so they could continue watching time go by.

They stood enraptured by the changing lines as they slowly advanced. Come 8:59 Harry felt the girl go tense in anticipation; He was rather nervous himself. After all, they had only seen the middle number change once before and it was the most significant thing happening in their entire universe. They waited in tense anticipation for this world changing event to finally take place. The seconds counted down: 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59,

And once more, all was **black.**

**A/N: Wouldn't it suck if I ended every single chapter like this?**


End file.
